Double eccentric roll mounting



April 21, 1970 I MAYFIELD ET AL 7 3,507,018

. DOUBLE ECCENTRIC ROLL MOUNTING Filed Jan. 24, 1968 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 vr amoRs WALTER s'. BAILEY DONALD w. MCKINNEY ,4 v f?" BY ATTORNEY A ril 21, 1970 J. M. MAYFIELD ET AL 3,507,018

DOUBLE EGCENTRIC ROLL MOUNTING Filed Jan. 24, 1968 2 sheets-sheet 2 FIG. 3 FIG. 4 F|G.5

F|G.4u FIG. 50

1D n D INVENTORS ATTORNEY United States Patent U.S. Cl. 28-1.6 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE An adjustable support for at least one of the feed rolls of a stuifer crirnper including a shaft carrying one of said rolls or carrying a bracket in which one of the said rolls is journalled. The shaft is journalled in at least one bushing having an eccentric inner bearing surface and the shaft carries an eccentric end bearing portion journalled in said bearing surface. The eccentricities of the end bearing surface of the shaft and of the inner bearing surface of the bushing are the same and the shaft and bushing are independently adjustable for varying the position of the axis of said shaft with respect to the axis of the bushing. The double eccentric mounting permits the axis of the shaft to be adjusted both horizontally and vertically into any given position.

This invention relates to a stuffer crirnper having feed rolls for feeding yarn into the crirnper for crimping therein and more particularly to an adjustable mounting for such feed rolls by which the parallelism of their contacting surfaces can be accurately adjusted and maintained.

An object is to provide a simple and accurate adjusting means of the above type which can be applied readily to existing machines.

Another object is to provide a simple and convenient means for adjusting the feed roll support to compensate for wear of the bearing surfaces and for thereby increasing the useful life of the parts.

In the production of feed rolls for use on stuifer crimp-- ers, it is very difficult to maintain the close tolerances of the mating sufaces of the feed rolls necessary to make them satisfactory for stutfer crimping yarn uniformly. Many times a view of the longitudinal cross section of the feed rolls will show the feed rolls to have a tapered look. Moreover any slight eccentricity in the holes in the feed roll shaft bearings 'will also tend to effect the parallel alignment of the feed rolls. In the case of cantilever mounted shaft type feed rolls feed roll pressures used in stulfer crimping may spring the shafts and cause misalignment of the feed roll surfaces.

For example, it has been discovered in stuffer crimping 1040 denier 68 filament nylon 66 yarn in a stulfer crirnper having 2%" diameter feed rolls of 3" width where the yarn is reciprocated across the feed roll surfaces while it is being fed into the stuifer crimping chamber that an error as small as .0005 in. in the parallel alignment of the feed rolls in the horizontal plane will make it difficult to crimp commercially acceptable uniformly crimped yarn.

In accordance with the present invenion, one of the feed rolls is assumed to be mounted for rotation in fixed bushings. The other feed roll is supported by a shaft or journaled in a bracket supported by a shaft one end of which is mounted concentrically and the other end of which is eccentrically mounted in an eccentric bushing. This provides a double eccentric by means of which the axis of the shaft can be adjusted to any desired angle within the range of movement of the eccentrics so as ice to bring the contracting surfaces of the rolls into parallelism in both the horizontal plane and in the vertical plane. This is to be distinguished from a single eccentric mounting which would permit movement of the axis of the shaft in a circular path only.

The nature of the invention will be better understood from the following description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings in which a specific embodiment has been shown for purposes of illustration.

In the drawings:

FIG. 1 is a partial front elevation of a stuffer crirnper embodying the invention;

FIG. 2 is a vertical section taken on the line 2--2 of FIG. 1 showing the eccentric bushings.

FIGS. 3, 4 and 5 are diagrams illustrating three different adjusted positions of the parts; and

FIGS. 3a, 4a and 5a are diagrams illustrating the different angular positions of the axes of the shaft produced by the adjustments of FIGS. 3, 4 and 5 respectively.

Referring to the drawings more in detail the invention is shown as applied to a stuffer crirnper of the general type shown in detail in Patent No. 2,734,251 (T-15). This patent shows a pair of feed rolls disposed to feed a yarn into the lower end of a stuffer crirnper chamber to be folded over and crimped against a mass of previously crimped yarn held compacted in said chamber. The present application shows only so much of a stuffer crirnper of this type as is necessary for an understanding of the invention.

More specifically, the drawing shows a housing 10 forming a crimping chamber mounted in a support block 11. A pair of feed rolls 12 and 13 are disposed be ow the housing 10 in a position to feed a yarn 14 into the crimping chamber.

The feed roll 12 is mounted on a shaft 15 which is journalled in bushings 16 in a bracket 17 carried by the block 11. The !feed roll 13 is mounted on a shaft 18 journalled in bushings 19 in a bracket 20 which is mounted on a shaft 21.

The shaft 21 is mounted concentrically at one end in a bore 22 in a flange 24 of the block 11. At its other end the shaft 21 is reduced in diameter to form a bearing area 25 which is eccentric with respect to the axis of the shaft 21. This bearing area 25 is journalled in an eccentric bearing surface 26 of a bushing 27 having an outer periphery 28 which is mounted for rotational adjustment in a flange 29 carried by the block 11. The eccentricity of the bearing surface of the bushing 27 is the same as the eccentricity of the bearing area 25 of the shaft 21 with respect to the axis of the shaft 21.

The feed roll 13 is held in feeding engagement with the yarn 14 by a cord 32 one end of which is secured to the bracket 17 and which extends around a roll 33 on the bracket 20 and returns over a roll 34 on the bracket 17 and carries a weight, not shown, by means of which the rolls are held in predetermined pressure engagement with the yarn. The rolls are geared together by gears 35 and 36 for operating at the same peripheral speeds and are driven by suitable means, not shown.

The bushing 27 is provided with a flange 46 which has a series of marks 40 thereon to facilitate adjustment and resetting and an adjusting pin 41 may be provided for insertion in suitable holes in the bushing flange 46 for manual adjustment of the bushing. The flanged portion 46 of bushing 27 is clamped against the outer surface of flange 29 by means of a clamp element 44 held in position by a screw 45. The shaft 21 may be provided with a screw driver slot 42 in its exposed end for adjustment and may be secured to the bracket 20 in set position by set screws 43.

In operation, if the parts are correctly aligned and the surfaces of the feed rolls are accurately ground, the contacting surfaces of the rolls would be in exact parallelism when the axis of the shaft 21 coincides with the axis of the outer peripheries of the bore 22 and bushing 27, as shown in FIG. 4. If any nonparallelism should develop, it can be readily corrected by adjusting both the position of the bushing 27 in the flange 29 and the position of the shaft 21 in the bushing 27.

FIGS. 3, 4 and 5 illustrate three possible adjustments of the eccentric bushing 27 and of the shaft 21 in the bushing. In FIG. 4 the bushing 27 is set so that the center B of the eccentric bearing surface is directly below the center A of the outer peripheral surface of the bushing, and the shaft is set so that its center C is directly above the center B of its eccentric bearing portion 25. The point C thus coincides with the point A and the shaft is centered with respect to the outer peripheral surface of the bushing 27. Since the other end of the shaft is centered in the bore 22, the axis of the shaft coincides with the axis of the outer peripheries of the bore and bushing. This position of the shaft in indicated in FIG. 4a wherein D represents the center of the bore 22 and A the center of the outer periphery of bushing 27, and C the axis of the shaft 21.

In the diagram of FIG. 3, the bushing 27 has been rotated clockwise through an angle of 90 degrees as indicated by the arrow B to bring the point B into horizontal alignment with the point A and the shaft 21 has been rotated about the point B by 180 degrees in a counter clockwise direction as indicated by the arrow C to bring the point C into horizontal alignment with the points Aand B. This produces the maximum range of adjustment of the point C to the left side of the point A. FIG. 3a illustrates the angular shifting of the axis on the shaft 21 produced by this adjustment. The position of the shaft 21 in the bore 22 does not change. Hence, the point D remains fixed, and the line DA represents the axis of the outer periphery of the bushing 27, and the axis of the shaft 21 has been shifted to the line D-C.

Similarly, in FIG. 5 the bushing 27 has been rotated counterclockwise by 90 degrees as indicated by the arrow B" and the shaft 21 has been rotated clockwise about point B by 180 degrees as indicated by the arrow C" to bring the points A, B and C into horizontal alignment, with the point C shifted by the maximum distance to the right. The axis of the shaft 21 has been shifted from the line DA to the line DC as shown in FIG. 5a.

In the embodiment shown, the axis of the feed roll 13 remains parallel to the axis of the shaft 21 whether the shaft 21 supports the bracket 20 or supports the feed roll directly. Hence the line D-C can be considered to represent the axis of the feed roll 13. The axis of the feed roll 12 is fixed and would be parallel to the line DA due to the construction of the machine. It is thus evident that the respective axes of the feed rolls can be angularly adjusted between the positions illustrated in FIGS. 3a and 5a in order to compensate for any irregularity in grinding of the feed roll surfaces or any mechanical displacement of the parts due to wear or distortion.

It is to be understood that the range of adjustment has been greatly exaggerated in the drawings and in practice would be of the order of a few thousandths of an inch. It is to be noted that the shaft 21 turns with the bracket 20 to allow the feed roll 13 to vary its clearance to accommodate variations in yarn thickness. This angle of change, however, is so minute that its effect on the parallelism of the roll surfaces is negligible. If desired, the shaft 21 can be fixed in the bushing 27 and the bracket 20 journallcd to rotate therearound although this refinement i -usually unnecessary.

The fit of the shaft in the bore 22 usually provides for suflicient angular movement to accommodate the above described adjustment.

The adjustment for parallelism has been described as applied to the shaft 21.

What is claimed is:

1. An adjustable support for a roll comprising a shaft by which said roll is supported, a member carrying a bushing in which said shaft is journalled, said bushing in which said shaft is journalled, said bushing having a cylindrical outer periphery mounted in said member, and an annular inner bearing surface eccentric with respect to said outer periphery, said shaft having an end bearing portion eccentric with respect to the axis of said shaft, said end portion being seated in said inner bearing surface of said bushing, said bushing and shaft being independently adjustable angularly for varying the position of the axis of said shaft with respect to the center of said bushing, said roll being journalled in a bracket and said bracket being mounted on said shaft for swinging movement about the axis of said shaft, and means for fixing said bracket to said shaft in the various adjusted positions of said shaft.

2. An adjustable roll support as set forth in claim 1 in which the eccentricities of said bushing and of said shaft are identical whereby in one adjusted position the axis of said shaft is concentric with the outer surface of said bushing.

3. An adjustable roll roll support as set forth in claim 1 including a second roll and bearing means positioning said second roll to contact the surface of said first roll to form a bite therewith, said eccentric adjusting means being adapted to adjust the parallelism of said contacting surfaces.

4. An adjustable roll support as set forth in claim 3 including a stulfer crimper having a crimping chamberdisposed to register with the bite of said rolls for receiving a yarn therefrom.

5. An adjustable roll support as set forth in claim 1 in which said shaft is journalled in a pair of spaced bearings in said support, one of said bearings having ,a fixed axis, and in which said bushing constitutes the other of said bearings, whereby said adjustment shifts ang'ularly the axis of said shaft.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,132,042 3/1915 Shelton 241230 XR 2,856,640 10/1958 Klein 1966 2,990,586 7/1961 Norton et al. 19-159 FOREIGN PATENTS 21,796 4/ 1883 Germany. 110,471 4/ 1964 Czechoslovakia.

DORSEY NEWTON, Primary Examiner US. Cl. X.R.

e V UNITED STATES-PATENT OFFICE CERTIFICATE CORRECTION Patent No. 3,507,018 April 21, 1970 Joseph Melvin Mayfield et a1.

It is certified that error appears in the above identified patent and that said Letters Patent are hereby corrected as shmm below:

Column 4, lines 14 and 1S, cancel "said bushing in which said shaft is journalled".

Signed and sealed this 29th day of December 1970.

(SEAL) Attest:

Edward M. Fletcher, Jr. WILLIAM E. SCHUYLER, JR.

Attesting Officer Commissioner of Patents 

